secularism

Religion and the state

A week is a lifetime in politics, goes an adage. And so it would seem. Just one week ago, we posited that Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition of the right was likely to form the next government in Israel. Since then, Benny Gantz, head of Israel’s Blue and White party, has been reinvigorated by Netanyahu’s challenges in pulling together a coalition, after original exit polls had the Likud-led coalition at 60 seats out of the 120 in the Knesset. This number has dropped through the actual vote count to 58, and it has changed the outlook.

As it has in the previous two elections, the result will hinge on the decision of Avigdor Liberman and his Yisrael Beitenu party, a right-wing but defiantly secular movement. Liberman has publicly released his demands for support. Among them: he will not support a government led by Netanyahu (or any other individual under indictment) and he wants to increase the number of ultra-Orthodox serving in the military, introduce civil marriage, thereby taking control of this lifecycle event from the exclusive purview of the rabbinate, and hand decision-making about commerce and transportation on Shabbat to local governments. Meanwhile, Gantz is having a rebellion in his own ranks about seeking support from the largely Arab Joint List in parliament. So, the process is largely back to where it’s been for more than a year, with no more certainty of who will form the next government.

Whatever happens, Liberman’s sweeping secularist proposals are nothing to ignore. The ally-turned-nemesis of Netanyahu, Liberman seems to have learned from the masters how to leverage minimal electoral success to enormous political advantage. In the past, it has been the religious parties that conditioned their support for desperate-to-make-a-deal leaders on getting key benefits and concessions for their respective communities. If Liberman succeeds in helping create a Blue and White government that implements some of his plans, it will represent the same tail-wagging-dog effect that religious parties used to assert Orthodox standards across much of Israeli society. Except Liberman will leverage his seven seats to repeal some or much of what those religious parties have achieved.

This Israeli moment brings to mind other rapidly changing political fortunes. Joe Biden, whose campaign was struggling to survive a few weeks ago, is suddenly (again) the undisputed front- runner for the Democratic nomination in the United States. There is another parallel between Israel and the United States that is currently evolving, this one less publicly known. While Liberman strives to diminish the connection between religion and state in his country, U.S. President Donald Trump is moving his country more in the direction of Israel’s religiously influenced society.

As in Canada, many religious organizations in the United States do an enormous amount of good, in many cases filling in gaps where government services can’t or won’t. Republican administrations have tended to expand – contract out, if you will – some social services previously delivered by governments, while the Obama administration, for example, introduced safeguards to prevent those agencies from discriminating against individuals or groups who they might deem outside their theological teachings.

Writing in the New York Times Sunday, Katherine Stewart, author of a book on religious nationalism, warned that Trump is eliminating those Obama-era safeguards and making it easier for publicly funded agencies to discriminate. For example, clients receiving services from a taxpayer-supported Christian organization could be forced to profess allegiance to Jesus in order to access services or an employee could be fired for not living a “biblical lifestyle,” the definition of which the religious organization, presumably, could define at their own whim.

A test case in Missouri seems innocent enough: a church maintains it should get federal funding to build a kids’ playground; that being refused such money represents discrimination against religion. The corollary is clear: if preventing tax money from funding religious organizations (even for something as innocuous as a playground) is discrimination, Stewart warns, “then the taxpayer has no choice but to fund religion.” This would represent an abrogation of one of the most fundamental cornerstones of the U.S. Constitution: the First Amendment, which declares, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” The framers of the Constitution were concerned not only that eliminating the barrier between government and religion would corrupt a government intended to serve all citizens but, perhaps equally, that it would corrupt religious institutions themselves. A number of the people on the test case’s side are also leaders among Trump’s evangelical constituency.

What was especially jarring when perusing the Sunday Times was a far more prominent story – on page A4, to be specific – about how Quebec’s secularism law is having a detrimental effect on civil servants, mostly women, from cultural minorities. The law, which precludes people who work in most roles in the public service from showing any external indications of religiosity – a kippa, a headscarf, a crucifix, a turban – is preventing individuals from beginning or advancing in their careers and, in some cases, effectively chasing them out of the province.

These disparate examples from three very different societies indicate the folly both of excessive religious interference in governmental affairs and heavy-handed efforts to have the opposite effect. Somewhere in the middle must be a commonsensical approach to these extremities. Of the three countries in the examples, Israel is perhaps the one where the challenges are most concrete and affect the most people. What, if anything, happens as result of Liberman’s gambit will be a fascinating experiment to watch.

We’ve got a lot of work to do

(photo from Tracy Le Blanc from Pexels)

I am not normally someone who is especially active on social media. I am not normally someone who curates current events, even though I consume them like undergrads do coffee – habitually, obsessively, out of necessity.

For a long time, my political associations and the extent to which I follow world news have been largely separate from the image I have cultivated for public view. As far as Facebook is concerned, I am represented through dog videos, feel-good intercommunity displays of solidarity, recipes and the occasional satire poking fun at the absurd and horrifying climate we’re living in – but there has been a shift. A shift toward police brutality, transphobia, racism. A shift toward synagogue shootings.

I do not share news stories on such topics because I enjoy doing so. I don’t enjoy reading about things that make my heart heavy, nor offering vulnerabilities to people who do not see me as a person, but rather the embodiment of an idea they disagree with. I do not take pleasure in sharing pain. It is my very nature to shield myself and others from it. Although part of love is letting others learn, and that involves experiencing pain and hurt.

It is easier to stick one’s head in the sand, but it doesn’t make it right. It is important to denounce insidiousness and nefariousness when you see it, especially if it does not directly affect you. It is important to hold space for those who are impacted by the injustices of the world, to hold them up and offer your strength. In doing so, we hope others do the same for us, and perhaps that is the only way we can get through these dark times with any semblance of sanity, of humanity.

I used to make a point of sharing light-hearted, feel-good posts, cognizant of the “bad news,” which is in no short supply. I believe my intention to provide some degree of respite from the political apocalypse we’re currently observing was a good one, but I would wager also misguided. To curate news is one thing, to disengage from it is another.

It became clear to me that, just because I am kept abreast of political happenings, and that I see them all over social media, does not mean others do; a classic cognitive bias that I should have spotted much earlier. This is true of what is happening in Trump’s America, to people of colour, LGBTQ folks, indigenous peoples, immigrants and refugees, Muslim communities. This is true of issues and current events related to antisemitism – I am now startlingly aware just how little people know about it. Not only the frequency of antisemitic incidents in North America and Europe, but, at a much more basic level, what antisemitism is and how to spot it.

For many of my friends, especially those who I’ve met in London, I am the only Jewish person they know. While it shouldn’t significantly impact the way I conduct myself, the weight my actions carry is not lost on me when I am the entire schematic representation of “Jew” for many of the people I come across. There is a pressure to behave in a way that is contrary to the many persistent stereotypes that precede my traditions and my culture. I must be generous to a fault lest I be stingy. I must laugh off antisemitism and micro-aggressions lest I be perceived as a paranoid, uppity Seinfeld type. I must be soft and kind and open, I must not have strong opinions lest I be the overbearing, naggy Jewish woman. I must downplay my love of bagels (they’re so damn good).

I also must be a political chameleon, dodging demonization from the left and right for equal and opposite accusations: we are the puppet masters, yet the infiltrators. We are the root of capitalism, yet the root of communism. We are somehow the one percent who controls the world’s wealth, yet we also fund the movement that rallies against it. We are insular elitists, yet permeating globalists. Those of us who look like me have assimilated to whiteness and reap the benefits, yet we will never be “white enough” to those who would see us dead.

Over time, the belief sticks: “I must not behave in any way, shape or form, in any manner that would give credence to the ideas that this is how Jews are, as I represent them to so many.” Yet it’s as exhausting for me to keep up as it is to keep this narrative straight.

I thought that, perhaps if I wanted to be a socially engaged citizen of the world, I could avoid these pitfalls by sharing information about the world as neutrally as I could. I could be the “impartial reporter,” make the news palatable, make it sterile. I could be taken more seriously, sanitized of emotional attachment that would otherwise be paint me as “irrational,” which is the ultimate insult in political and academic discourse. (Undoubtedly rooted in sexism and undoubtedly seen as weak, as it is perceived as feminine.)

But to do this serves no one well. It is inherently more harmful to the people who are affected by the issues being reported. To be “unbiased” in the wake of something that should not be polarizing, yet somehow is, ultimately reflects complicity. It is contrary to my values as a person. It is contrary to my values as a Jew.

This confuses many people, who know I am largely secular and open in my agnosticism. How can I profess myself to be as Jewish as I do, while maintaining such a wide berth from religiosity and theism? By that definition, I’m not “that Jewish.”

I may not believe in a God, but I do believe in my people, and in the traditions that shaped me to be who I am. I am Jewish insofar as my birth and upbringing, in my values and my conduct, in my pursuit of tikkun olam, repairing the world. I am “Jewish enough” to lead services despite my relationship with my faith. I am “Jewish enough” to abstain from pork but not “Jewish enough” to abstain from shellfish or cheeseburgers. I may not be “so Jewish” as to observe Shabbat to the letter, but I am Jewish enough to be gunned down in a synagogue.

My tradition is one of orthopraxy, of deed over creed. We are meant to “pray with our feet” as well as with our words. The Talmud teaches us not to be overwhelmed by the enormity of the world’s grief, but rather to do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now; that we are not obligated to complete the work of repairing the fractures and chasms in our world, but neither are we free to abandon it.

There is the story in the Talmud of a man who came to the great rabbis of the day and told them to teach him Torah while he stood on one foot. He did this to mock them. He first went to Rabbi Shammai, who refused to engage when he recognized the man’s intentions. The man went next to Rabbi Hillel and made the same challenge: teach me your Torah while I stand on one foot. Rabbi Hillel knew this man’s intention as well, but he was patient. He simply said, “What is hateful to you, do not do to others; all the rest is commentary. Go and study this.”

It should be that simple. If only it were that simple. I don’t know if the reason it isn’t is because of psycho-schematic representations in our minds, or nationalism, or capitalism, or groupthink, or whataboutisms, or strawmen, or ego, or that we forget that, when we bleed, we all bleed the same. I don’t know if it’s because we’ve forgotten how to be empathetic, or we’ve stopped doing it because it hurts, or that we feel powerless and that feels worse.

A friend told me recently that they don’t engage with this stuff because they’ve become numb to the horrors of the world. I can understand that, truly. Although I think it is precisely because of the commonplace, routinized nature of these injustices that we must engage because, when we don’t, they become routine, and they become a part of the fabric of our society that we will forget shouldn’t be there in the first place.

We have a saying in Judaism, “tzedek, tzedek, tirdof,” “justice, justice, you shall pursue.” But our understanding of tzedek is different to that of mishpat or din, other Hebrew words referring to justice or law in a strictly legal sense. Tzedek is tempered by compassion, of doing not necessarily what is lawful, but what is the right thing to do. And there is an emphasis on the action, on the doing. This may very well be rooted in some of the many names Jews use to refer to God, and the concept that people are made in God’s image.

In our tradition, there are many different names for God to reflect different aspects of God’s characteristics. Elohim is common, derived from the ancient word for judge. Certainly, people who are unfamiliar with the Torah often criticize the “Old Testament” for barbarism, for a wrathful, vengeful God that falls uncompromisingly into this depiction of an impartial, removed judge who delivers reward or punishment in accordance with the word that was given. I’m not about to unpack that, that’s a whole other essay in itself.

Unquestionably, the most sacred name we have for God is one we don’t even know how to pronounce, and are not supposed to pronounce, that is often anglicized as YHVH. It is derived from the Hebrew word for “to be,” and it is sometimes understood to translate roughly as “the Essence of Being.” This name is said to reflect an intimacy, a mercy, a love that perhaps we don’t even know how to name.

These different names may suggest a God of multiple beings, or even multiple gods, but Judaism is quite strict in its monotheism, and these names are used in scripture deliberately in ways that are context-dependent: Elohim deals justice, YHVH deals in mercy.

“Genesis tells two creation stories,” writes Rabbi Mark Glickman, “in the first, Elohim is the Creator, in the second, the creator is YHVH Elohim. To reconcile the accounts, ancient rabbis argued that God first tried to create the world using only justice, and it didn’t work.”

I’m very much a Darwinist by trade, but the message of this rings true to me. To exact change, to make something sustainable, we must do so with justice that is tempered by compassion.

Now, compassion does not mean, “try to understand neo-Nazis and justify their actions.” What compassion does mean, at least in part, is to show kindness and solidarity to other groups who are being hurt, even when we ourselves are licking our wounds and trying to find our feet. It means to support one another, even when we ourselves have trouble standing. It means speaking up for those whose voices are hoarse and raw from screaming. It means using our visibility to shed light on stories that are sequestered to shadows. It means form a patchwork quilt of community, which, when stitched together and reinforced, is warm, strong and unbreakable.

These are dark times. I say this not with the intent to be dramatic or prosaic, but simply factual. But that doesn’t mean we can’t kick at it until it bleeds something more hopeful. That being said, if we want any chance of making it out alive, we’ve got to get to work.

Sasha Kaye is currently studying in London, England. An alumnus of King David High School and the University of British Columbia, she enrolled at the Royal College of Music in London in performance science after her studies in classical voice performance and psychology at UBC. She was recently awarded a master’s of science with distinction for her research on the use of simulation technology as part of an intervention strategy to manage performance-anxiety symptoms. Now a doctoral student at RCM, Kaye is working to identify areas where elite musicians may require additional support to thrive in life, rather than simply survive.

Torah is part of who we are

Much to the disappointment of their Orthodox brethren, most of the Jewish people outside the Orthodox world probably do not believe that the Torah was literally received at Sinai. This creates something of a problem on Shavuot, the festival on which the giving of the Torah at Sinai is celebrated.

On Passover and Sukkot, even non-believers who reject the literal truth of the biblical stories on which these festivals are based, can find ways to connect to universal notions of freedom from slavery and the temporariness of the human condition that they inspire. On other holidays, too – Rosh Hashanah and Chanukah come to mind – it is possible to relate to broader themes and even to the symbols and rituals that seek to evoke them. Shavuot is different. It is limited in symbolic ritual, and it does not offer an easily identifiable, abstract idea worthy of celebration even by non-religious Jews.

What’s more is that the rabbinic sages seem to make a point of exalting an aspect of the Mount Sinai story that is anathema to modern sensibilities. “Na’aseh v’nishmah” – “We will do and we will hear/understand” – a phrase uttered, according to Exodus 24:7, as the Jewish people accept the Torah, is often glorified in our tradition as an act of blind obedience. The willingness to do first, and comprehend later, is seen as a readiness to receive the Torah unconditionally, regardless of its content. The Midrash praises the Jews for the commitment – unlike that of any other nation – to follow the scriptures without asking why. Had the attempt to alienate Jews of Western, liberal convictions been deliberate, it would not have been more successful.

What are those who question the merits of blind obedience to do with this tradition? How to reconcile teaching our children to question, when we are told to applaud the fact that the Children of Israel did not?

Fortunately, our sources – as always – offer alternatives to this particular approach. For one thing, the text of “na’aseh v’nishmah” provides less evidence of blind obedience than popular wisdom suggests. Chapter 24 of Exodus, where the concept of “na’aseh v’nishmah” is cited, actually stipulates twice (in verses 3 and 7) that the Torah was first read in its entirety to the Children of Israel. The result is a far less dramatic narrative of the Jewish people’s agreement to accept the Torah, after it was heard.

Others offer a softer reading of “na’aseh v’nishmah” to suggest that the Jewish people demonstrates through this phrase not unthinking acceptance of the Torah, but rather the view that it is through the act of doing – of actually fulfilling the commandments – that the Torah will be understood.

More significantly, there is a well-known, and contrary, midrashic tradition that suggests that the Torah was not in fact willingly embraced by the Jewish people at Sinai, but instead coerced upon them. The Talmud, in Tractate Shabbat 88a, drawing from the phrase in Exodus 19:17 that the Jewish people camped “b’tachtit ha’har” – “at the base/under the mountain” – suggests that the Holy One blessed be He covered the mountain over them like an (inverted) barrel, and said to them, “If you accept the Torah, fine, but, if not, there will be your burial place.”

The Jewish tradition demonstrates a constant tension between unquestioning obedience to God, and struggle with Him. Both are valued, neither absolutely. We are told of the Abraham who obediently agreed to sacrifice Isaac, and of the Abraham who argued with God to spare the innocents of Sodom. And, in the case of the Torah at Sinai, we are relayed two distinct rabbinic narratives – one, of a people eagerly accepting their canonical text, and the other, of that text being forced upon them.

When taken together, these conflicting narratives seem to be saying that we can either embrace the Torah or fight against it, but in either case we cannot escape that it is ours. In the same way as we cannot choose our parents, we cannot choose our spiritual ancestry. Whether out of choice or out of coercion, the Torah is our spiritual home. We can quarrel with it, turn from it, reinterpret it or embrace it whole, but it is the unavoidable reference point from which we chart our path.

I have always been struck by the fact that the Gemara cited above strangely says that the Jewish people will be buried “there” rather than “here.” After all, if the message is about the coercion at Mount Sinai, wouldn’t the threat be to accept the Torah or to perish at the foot of the mountain? Instead, the implication of the text is that the risk of burial is at a later time and place, as if to suggest that the impact of rejecting the Torah will not be immediate.

In this sense, the text can be seen as a kind of warning. A people that is not familiar with its foundational texts, that is not engaged with them – whether in agreement or in argument – risks withering away. Our burial place is not at the moment of rejection; it is “there,” further down the road, when the connection of future generations with the conflicting and profound stories that shape our tradition is severed.

Shavuot need not only be seen as a celebration of the acceptance of the Torah. It also celebrates acceptance of the idea that who we were is part of who we are. It is an embrace of, and reconnection with, our story and our texts, not necessarily because we accept them literally and wholeheartedly, but because they are part of the DNA of Jewish civilization.

We do not enter the earth free and clear to invent ourselves from naught. Like it or not, we are born into a legacy, a tradition and a set of values that should draw us into a dialogue and shape our identity and sense of meaning. That dialogue may be one of reverence, or of rebellion, or of something in between. But, at its heart, it prizes the idea that, for the Jewish people to stake a claim to a truer and healthier future, we must be honest, learned and engaged in the claim our heritage has upon us.

Dr. Tal Becker is a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and a senior fellow of the Hartman Institute’s iEngage Project. More articles from the SHI can be found at hartman.org.il.

Renewal in education

The Peretz Centre is moving towards a renewed commitment to social justice, Yiddishkeit, the arts and building community. (photo from peretz-centre.org)

If you walk into Vancouver’s Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture on a Sunday afternoon between September and June, you are likely to find a group of families singing Yiddish songs such as “Shabbes Zol Zayn” and “Az der Rebbe Tanz,” making latkes or doing arts and crafts, while learning new and unique approaches to being Jewish. Some of the children are “officially,” i.e. halachically, fully Jewish by birth, with a Jewish mom and dad, but many are “half-Jewish” (with the Jewish parent being either mom or dad) or “double half-Jewish,” with parents who themselves were raised in half-Jewish families.

This is the Peretz Family Education program, where adults and kids learn together. Bubbies and zaydies often come to visit, and there is song, story and food that is shared in a community of families eager for a connection to their roots (or half-roots, as the case may be) that is not dogmatic or religious. This program, now entering its third year, is a remarkable success, attracting inter-cultural as well as LGBT families and others who feel at home at Peretz.

“We had families coming to us for years, asking us to create a place for their children to feel connected to Jewish culture, as well as progressive humanistic values, that was not focused on religion,” said Donna Becker, Peretz coordinator.

Vancouver Jews may know of the Peretz Centre from its 70-year legacy as the home for Yiddish-speaking, secular Jewish education. Loosely affiliated with sister organizations in Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal, Peretz was founded by non-religious Jews who loved the Yiddish language, culture and traditions. These founding members were more focused on humanism, social justice and activism than on ritual, prayers and liturgy.

For decades, the Peretz community boasted a school with hundreds of students learning Jewish cultural identity and progressive values. The hub of Yiddish culture in Vancouver, it hosted (and still does) the Vancouver Jewish Folk Choir, theatre groups, classes and study groups, and artistic events celebrating Judaism from a cultural perspective. However, as the only organization in the Vancouver Jewish community that spearheaded a secular humanist and progressive perspective on the Jewish experience, it was for a long time somewhat on the margins of the community.

Then came a period of contraction. With many of the founders gone, and with Yiddish increasingly becoming a boutique, intellectual study rather than a living language and tradition, Peretzniks were not able to sustain the school-age programs. Apart from a thriving secular b’nai mitzvah program, the focus has been on strengthening the Peretz community through adult discussion groups, seniors programming, lectures, concerts, the choir, plus alternative non-religious celebrations and observances to mark Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur, Chanukah, Passover and other important Jewish holidays.

But, once again, the Peretz Centre is going through changes. Increasingly, young families in Vancouver and the surrounding area have been seeking a place where they can raise their children with a secular Jewish identity resonant with modern concerns of environmentalism and reconciliation and healing from the trauma so prevalent in many Jewish communities.

The new family education program is the brainchild of Dr. Danny Bakan, a PhD in education with more than 20 years experience facilitating Jewish Renewal and secular Jewish education.

“When we started, I insisted that this be a family education program; everyone is here to learn together,” said Bakan. “We focus on creating a joyous way to be connected, staying away from the common narrative of being victimized as Jews.”

In the last two years, Bakan has been helping Peretz reboot. And, it seems to be working.

“There is nothing like it, to my mind, in the city: secular, progressive and filled with an incredible range of activities that appeal to all of us, ranging in age, I suspect, from 5 to 75!” said family education parent Greg Buium.

Now, with new young families flocking to join via the program, the Peretz Centre is moving towards a renewed commitment to social justice, Yiddishkeit, the arts and building community. New offerings for the fall 2016 session will include secular Hebrew for children and adults, a b’nai mitzvah boot camp for teens and adults, art exhibits and a youth open stage and coffeehouse.

For more information about Peretz Centre programs, events and activities, visit peretz-centre.org or contact Becker at [email protected] or 604-325-1812.

Beneath burkini

The burkini fiasco, if it has had any positive effects, should have opened some eyes to how silly human beings can behave when we become enmeshed in a fabricated social panic. The issue, for those who have not seen the image of French police standing over a woman at a beach, requiring her to remove articles of clothing, is the idea that Muslim women in modest beach wear are a threat to Western civilization.

About 30 coastal towns in France banned the “burkini,” swimwear that generally covers all but a woman’s face, hands and feet. Even after a French court ruled the ban illegal, most of the mayors insisted they would continue enforcing the dress code.

The irony is jarring. Ostensibly based on the idea that Islam or Islamism – the motivation and the perceived threat are blurry – oppresses women by forcing them into extensive body-covering clothing, police in a democratic Western country force a woman to disrobe. (It was inevitable, also, that photos would soon go viral depicting nuns frolicking in the ocean in full Christian religious regalia, unmolested by authorities.)

France’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls has called the burkini a “provocation” and “an expression of a political project, a counter-society, based notably on the enslavement of women,” an “archaic vision” in which women are “immodest, impure and that they should be totally covered. That is not compatible with the values of France and the Republic.”

We can leave to the French what is compatible with the values of France and the Republic, yet surely a nation founded on the pillars of liberty and equality must find something amiss when its police devote their time and resources to enforcing swimwear rules.

France is singular among European countries for its stated commitment to laïcité, the prohibition against religious involvement in government affairs in service of a secular ideal. Similar issues have been addressed in Quebec, where overtly religious Christian symbols, including the crucifix, were deemed part of the province’s cultural heritage and thereby conveniently exempted from the ban on religious imagery. But, in France, as elsewhere in Europe, more is at play than ideas of secularism. In fact, the imperfect heritage of secularism is being manipulated as an excuse to target a particular group.

On the one hand, let us not pretend that there are not legitimate concerns and issues raised by the increasing population of Muslims in Europe. Among this population, both among immigrants and those born in Europe, are a small number who have become radicalized and are a genuine threat to society. A larger number holds ideas that challenge the European consensus on the role of women in society, pluralism and the rights of people to live free from religious coercion. These are legitimate concerns that require addressing through long-range integration strategies and societal accommodation between traditions – as does the rise in Europe of nationalism, xenophobia and racism.

But the burkini is, at best, a side issue; a symptom of a few things, none of them healthy. Regardless, the “solution” to any social coercion around women’s clothing is certainly not legal proscription, at least it should not be in a Western democracy. Burkini-banning has more in common with religious extremism – modesty “police” exist in various communities around the world – than the Western freedoms the burkini-bashers claim to defend.